WASHINGTON – Authorities here are now investigating the possibility that the Beltway sniper shootings are the work of multiple shooters using multiple .223-caliber rifles and traveling in multiple white vehicles, WorldNetDaily has learned.

“We’re looking at that angle,” said Prince Georges County Police Department Detective Paula Pascarella, working on the special ATF task force.

In 10 days, 10 people in Washington and four surrounding counties have been shot. Eight have died, all from a single bullet wound to the torso or head.

Authorities are growing increasingly doubtful that a single sniper could strike with such frequency over such a broad territory in such a short period – and still avoid detection.

“If this is one shooter, he’s got a helluva lot of energy – and luck,” said a federal law-enforcement officer.

In addition, eyewitness accounts of the vehicle seen fleeing the scenes of at least four shootings have varied.

A witness in the Prince Georges County shooting claimed to have seen a man leave the woods carrying a duffle bag near the school where a 13-year-old boy was shot. The witness said the man got into a truck.

Witnesses at a Sunoco gas station in Prince William County say they saw a white panel van (with no side windows) resembling a Dodge Caravan leave the scene.

Now police in Spotsylvania County, site of the latest shooting which occurred at an Exxon station, are looking for two men in a white box-shaped cargo van with what they describe as “ladder racks” on top. It’s said to resemble a Chevy Astro Van.

Authorities say white cargo trucks and vans are common, making it hard to track down the shooters.

They also say that – with the exception of the school shooting, which apparently came from the woods – it’s possible that the sniper or snipers are firing from inside the windowless cargo areas, and not the passenger windows, of the vehicles.